Facebook has always overvalued itself, but Microsoft wanted to get enough of a stake that they'd be able to keep the advertising contract for the foreseeable future. Plus, they'll be able to push silverlight through the affluent population of facebook. When you factor in the value of those two things, $250 million is nothing.
I maintain that they didn't buy the share of the company, they bought the advertising rights and the ability to push silverlight. The advertising lets them get more people to push advertisements through them instead/in addition to google. If they do nothing but break even on all the publishing on the site, $250 million is a bargain for the kind of exposure they'll be getting.
Revelations, where it has the book and the seven seals (or chapters). The books has the history of the earth, the seals each correspond to one thousand years. We're near the end of the sixth, the seventh is the end of the world as we know it followed by the millennial reign.
That ungrateful bastard, he's lucky he got it at all! If I were the one making the decision, they wouldn't have gotten the game until they'd showered, but their hair, and their women all shaved.
For a man who's devoted his life to furthering knowledge about evolution and who's revered darwin for all that time, finding out that a paper which has legitimate errors in it is being misquoted can be disheartening. If Stephen Hawking were to find out that one of his papers were being quoted to "disprove" Relativity, or Richard Feynman were misquoted as saying that quantum physics is impossible and stupid, I'm sure they would have the same reaction.
Manhunt 2 invites the kind of ferocious backlash that has Take-Two's financial backers reaching for their Zantac whenever they see Rockstar in the news. Only if buckets of money give them heartburn. Rockstar is one of the most critically loved and successful studios around right now. Controversy plays right into their hands because the games are legitimately good, so when someone starts talking about one of their games it always turns good at some point and makes people want to play their games. The controversy isn't for everyone, but if you don't like controversy you shouldn't be backing Rockstar or their publishers. If you don't mind the controversy, they're making a lot of money off of it.
This is US-centric, but what it boils down to is that the game isn't banned if it receives that high of a rating, it's just that you can't buy the games anywhere except maybe a porn shop. If the title isn't available at wal mart, it might as well not exist for most people, so it's a huge hit to the income and results in an informal ban. Since download services like steam are becoming more popular, and they don't need to worry so much about carrying adult oriented titles, they can offer the game. Also, I read somewhere that steam gets the company 20% more per copy than a normal distribution method, so that would also help.
Britain's a different case, however. If it's an informal ban like the US, then the same analysis above holds true. If it's an actual ban, then the download services might just let people from britain download it anyway or, like people who want japanese music off of itunes, they can just change their address and make it think they're from the US.
Loop Quantum Gravity anyone? Quantum physics has been the most successful theory in history, why not expand on that rather than bastardizing it with a (so far unprovable) theory? Beyond that, we have most new physicists moving into string theory when, in reality, string theory has nothing to offer the world in the near future.
Even if it turned out to be true, so what? There are four or five breakthroughs that would need to be made so that string theory is even testable, much less contributing to the betterment of mankind. In the meanwhile, there's still stuff to be done in quantum physics, the standard model, etc.
It's a frustrating thing for physicists who are doing real work to see all the graduate students flock to a theory that hasn't given the world anything but a beautiful idea.
The uniformity is thought to arise from the other moons orbiting Saturn; it's theorized that they smooth out the rings and keep them in stasis like they are.
And IE was the standard web browser. And most people lived with its UI. Except that Firefox came along and popularized tabs. And, except for tabs, their UI was identical to IE's. Their menus are the same, the buttons are to the left of the address bar, the title is displayed in the title bar next to the icon for the program while the icon for the page is displayed to the left of the URL. It even renders most of the html like IE would (closer than opera or safari). What it did was add really good functionality without breaking the UI.
Name one thing. Copying, pasting, rotating, cropping, changing colors, drawing fucking lines and boxes, the buttons and their layouts, having everything in a separate window and not being able to dock/undock at my leisure, not having the layers window pop up automatically and not being able to do some operations on a gif unless I copy and paste it into a new window. Most importantly, the look/feel of the program isn't the same as photoshop, which is a pain in the ass and the most important thing to people.
Re:Most important thing
on
GIMP 2.4 Released
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· Score: 2, Insightful
That's actually not useful in the slightest, because they're not interested in becoming more like Photoshop, they require a reason for changing the UI. Apparently they don't realize, completely ignore or have too much of a chip on their shoulder to admit that sometimes "because everyone on the fucking earth already knows how to do it this way" isn't a valid reason.
Re:Ask artists, not geeks
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GIMP 2.4 Released
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· Score: 0, Redundant
just because Photoshop is the "industry leader" doesn't mean it's perfect - nor does it mean that the UI is perfect. But it does mean that it's the standard.
You can learn the [Gimp] UI inside and out in a day, even if you're really lazy/slow. I would disagree. I've learned the Photoshop UI in a couple of hours, the Fireworks UI in about one hour, and I've used Gimp for over 20 hours and still find the UI frustrating and stupid and completely ass-backwards.
I hope they moved the gui closer to that of Paintshop. I can't tell you how many times I've been unable to edit an image for one reason or another, or the expected behavior is what happens. I know a lot of people love GIMP and its scripting abilities, but seriously, when they're trying to enter the market dominated by a few programs with that same gui and behavior, they should replicate it.
I was thinking the exact opposite, that I just wish the federal government would step back and let the states deal with it. The constitution was intended to keep the federal government from being the end all authority and keep the states as the primary governing body for most cases. From a stricter constitutional perspective, the EPA should allow all the state restrictions the states want to put on as long as they still fulfill the restrictions of the EPA.
I disagree with the summary saying that it shows the company is worth $15 billion, that's ridiculous. It's an exclusive advertising deal with a small share of the company thrown in for good measure. The real question is, how much of that $240 million is for the advertising and how much is for a share of the company? My guess is that the majority (75+ percent) is for the advertising.
What I really think this shows is that Microsoft thinks Facebook, and not myspace, is going to be dominant soon and for a long time. Facebook has the better interface and the better look/feel, and their user base is exploding. However, I also agree with the parent in saying that people will soon be leaving facebook for greener pastures. If the dot-com boom and embarrassing posting on slashdot about being worthy a lot of money are any indication, the owners should start selling their sharesnow, getting some of the insane wealth in case they can't get it later.
From what I've heard, the problem is that google's using a MySQL 4.x (pre 4.3 iirc) code base, so they have to rework a lot of code to the current base.
A distro like Ubuntu is more like a VW Golf TDI that can transform into a panel van or 18 wheeler when necessary. It's obviously superior in every way, but people complain about stupid stuff like gas stations that don't sell diesel and how hard it is to get through a 10' tunnel when you're in 18-wheeler mode. I'm going to go further and say that it can be a car, a semi, a fleet of semis (beowulf cluster), a missile, a tank, an RC toy, or a cd player. It can also infect others with itself (through virtualization like Xen; haven't heard of any virtualization software that runs off of windows yet). I'd say linux is like a mix between the borg and the transformers.
I'd like to know if forcing your beliefs on other people is worth twice as much crime? Is making cheaper, more effective paint worth twice as much crime? Personally I'd say no to both of those but I'm sure half the country disagrees with me on the first point. Yes it is. Taken to the logical extreme, all laws are a form of forcing your beliefs on other people. Since crime is defined as the breaking of laws, then forcing your beliefs on other people has led to all crime.
Anyone with their head not lodged in their anus can figure out that this is a moral gray area. At what point do you draw the line between murder and elimination of an unwanted parasite? What's the difference between the first and second trimester that makes abortions okay in the former but not the latter? What's the difference between a baby that's still dependent on its mother and an unborn child? Why is it considered murder if you kill the child in the womb if the mother was going to keep it but not if the mother doesn't want it?
Slashdot Mirror
Facebook has always overvalued itself, but Microsoft wanted to get enough of a stake that they'd be able to keep the advertising contract for the foreseeable future. Plus, they'll be able to push silverlight through the affluent population of facebook. When you factor in the value of those two things, $250 million is nothing.
I maintain that they didn't buy the share of the company, they bought the advertising rights and the ability to push silverlight. The advertising lets them get more people to push advertisements through them instead/in addition to google. If they do nothing but break even on all the publishing on the site, $250 million is a bargain for the kind of exposure they'll be getting.
Revelations, where it has the book and the seven seals (or chapters). The books has the history of the earth, the seals each correspond to one thousand years. We're near the end of the sixth, the seventh is the end of the world as we know it followed by the millennial reign.
That ungrateful bastard, he's lucky he got it at all! If I were the one making the decision, they wouldn't have gotten the game until they'd showered, but their hair, and their women all shaved.
For a man who's devoted his life to furthering knowledge about evolution and who's revered darwin for all that time, finding out that a paper which has legitimate errors in it is being misquoted can be disheartening. If Stephen Hawking were to find out that one of his papers were being quoted to "disprove" Relativity, or Richard Feynman were misquoted as saying that quantum physics is impossible and stupid, I'm sure they would have the same reaction.
This is US-centric, but what it boils down to is that the game isn't banned if it receives that high of a rating, it's just that you can't buy the games anywhere except maybe a porn shop. If the title isn't available at wal mart, it might as well not exist for most people, so it's a huge hit to the income and results in an informal ban. Since download services like steam are becoming more popular, and they don't need to worry so much about carrying adult oriented titles, they can offer the game. Also, I read somewhere that steam gets the company 20% more per copy than a normal distribution method, so that would also help.
Britain's a different case, however. If it's an informal ban like the US, then the same analysis above holds true. If it's an actual ban, then the download services might just let people from britain download it anyway or, like people who want japanese music off of itunes, they can just change their address and make it think they're from the US.
And John Dvorak thinks it's a good idea for AMD and Intel to merge. Sometimes, it's better to ignore asshats with stupid opinions.
The payback doesn't justify the number of physicists going into it. We're well past the point of diminishing returns.
Loop Quantum Gravity anyone? Quantum physics has been the most successful theory in history, why not expand on that rather than bastardizing it with a (so far unprovable) theory? Beyond that, we have most new physicists moving into string theory when, in reality, string theory has nothing to offer the world in the near future.
Even if it turned out to be true, so what? There are four or five breakthroughs that would need to be made so that string theory is even testable, much less contributing to the betterment of mankind. In the meanwhile, there's still stuff to be done in quantum physics, the standard model, etc.
It's a frustrating thing for physicists who are doing real work to see all the graduate students flock to a theory that hasn't given the world anything but a beautiful idea.
I don't know, the evidence isn't conclusive, and there are at least 5 scientists at Exxon-Mobile who think it's bull.
The uniformity is thought to arise from the other moons orbiting Saturn; it's theorized that they smooth out the rings and keep them in stasis like they are.
That's actually not useful in the slightest, because they're not interested in becoming more like Photoshop, they require a reason for changing the UI. Apparently they don't realize, completely ignore or have too much of a chip on their shoulder to admit that sometimes "because everyone on the fucking earth already knows how to do it this way" isn't a valid reason.
It's got layers currently, or were you needing something more specific?
I'm guessing they have the unix version numbering, where even numbers are release, odd numbers are development.
I hope they moved the gui closer to that of Paintshop. I can't tell you how many times I've been unable to edit an image for one reason or another, or the expected behavior is what happens. I know a lot of people love GIMP and its scripting abilities, but seriously, when they're trying to enter the market dominated by a few programs with that same gui and behavior, they should replicate it.
I was thinking the exact opposite, that I just wish the federal government would step back and let the states deal with it. The constitution was intended to keep the federal government from being the end all authority and keep the states as the primary governing body for most cases. From a stricter constitutional perspective, the EPA should allow all the state restrictions the states want to put on as long as they still fulfill the restrictions of the EPA.
I disagree with the summary saying that it shows the company is worth $15 billion, that's ridiculous. It's an exclusive advertising deal with a small share of the company thrown in for good measure. The real question is, how much of that $240 million is for the advertising and how much is for a share of the company? My guess is that the majority (75+ percent) is for the advertising.
What I really think this shows is that Microsoft thinks Facebook, and not myspace, is going to be dominant soon and for a long time. Facebook has the better interface and the better look/feel, and their user base is exploding. However, I also agree with the parent in saying that people will soon be leaving facebook for greener pastures. If the dot-com boom and embarrassing posting on slashdot about being worthy a lot of money are any indication, the owners should start selling their sharesnow, getting some of the insane wealth in case they can't get it later.
From what I've heard, the problem is that google's using a MySQL 4.x (pre 4.3 iirc) code base, so they have to rework a lot of code to the current base.
I think I'd browse at 3, just to be sure.
Anyone with their head not lodged in their anus can figure out that this is a moral gray area. At what point do you draw the line between murder and elimination of an unwanted parasite? What's the difference between the first and second trimester that makes abortions okay in the former but not the latter? What's the difference between a baby that's still dependent on its mother and an unborn child? Why is it considered murder if you kill the child in the womb if the mother was going to keep it but not if the mother doesn't want it?